Head over heels in Hurstville

Get down ... Morris Iemma shows his moves at the state ALP campaign launch at the Hurstville Civic Centre yesterday. Photo: Ben Rushton

The Opposition Leader, Peter Debnam, has been bending over backwards in his budgie smugglers to point out to voters that he exists, and that his Coalition offers something different from Labor.

So yesterday, in a classic piece of political one-upmanship, the Premier took to breakdancing on stage at the NSW Labor campaign launch.

If only. In fact, the most entertaining thing Morris Iemma did at yesterday's low-key affair was to lose his balance momentarily during this photo opportunity with his kids.

On top of their debates on TV and in the media, Debnam and Iemma have been doing battle in cyberspace for this election.

Labor set up a website at www.debnamrecord.com to discredit Debnam, so Debnam set up www.debnamrecord.com.au and placed the content from his own website there.

In response, the Libs have also set up a site at www.morrisiemma.com and placed their campaign advertising on it. Iemma's own website is at www.morrisiemma.com.au.

Confused? That's the idea, presumably - to ensure that any time you look for either leader online, your search is frustrated by election advertising for the other side.

And it's not only the main parties that are guilty of this sort of one-upmanship. In the electorate of Manly, the Liberal candidate Mike Baird had an ad in The Manly Daily this month, promising "Energy, Integrity, Results".

It gets more confusing still when you ask Baird why they're so similar.

The newspaper slogan was a mistake, he told us. His normal slogan is actually "Integrity, Passion, Results" and he has had it since February last year, according to a press release we saw.

Barr, predictably enough, also says he had "Integrity" and "Results" first, but could only trace it back as far as late last year. As they say so succinctly and yet so poetically in South-East Asia, "Same, same, but different."

Posted
by SMH OnlineFebruary 19, 2007 12:50 AM

LATEST COMMENTS

The parties have made an error in assumtion, that we the voters are actually interested in searching for information online about their respective leaders.